Introduction :-
- Communalism in a broad sense implies blind allegiance to one’s own communal group – religious, linguistic or ethnic – rather than to the larger society or to the nation as a whole. In its extreme form, communalism manifests itself in hatred towards groups perceived as hostile, ultimately leading to violent attacks on other communities.
- General amity and the peaceful coexistence of various faiths in India have been the envy of the civilised world. Nonetheless given the diversity of our society and our complex historical baggage, we are often beset with communal tensions which occasionally erupt into violence. At times, either bigoted and fundamentalist leadership, or unscrupulous political operators with an eye on short term electoral advantage, have deliberately and maliciously engineered communal passions, hatred and even violence to achieve sectarian polarisation. Most of the communal flare-ups have been between Hindus and Muslims, though conflicts involving other communities have also occasionally occurred. Similarly, there have been other ethnic clashes from time to time
Shortcoming in tackling Communalism:-
- Systemic Problems:-
• Conflict resolution mechanisms are ineffective;
• Intelligence gathered is not accurate, timely and actionable.
• Bad personnel policies – poor choice of officials and short tenures – lead to inadequate grasp of local conditions.
- Administrative Shortcomings:-
• The administration and the police fail to anticipate and read indicators which precipitated violence;
• Even after the appearance of first signals, the administration and police are slow to react;
• Field functionaries tend to seek and wait for instructions from superiors and tend to interfere in local matters undermining local initiative and authority;
• The administration and police at times act in a partisan manner .
• At times there is failure of leadership, even total abdication on the part of those entrusted with the maintenance of public order.
- Post-riot Management Deficiencies :-
• Rehabilitation is often neglected, breeding resentment and residual anger.
• Officials are not held to account for their failures, thus perpetuating slackness and incompetence.
Solution:-
- Community Policing:-
- Community Policing is an area specific proactive process of working with the community for prevention and detection of crime, maintenance of public order and resolving local conflicts and with the objective of providing a better quality of life and sense of security.
- The basic principle underlying community policing is that ‘a policeman is a citizen with uniform and a citizen is a policeman without uniform’. The term ‘community policing’ has become a buzzword, but it is nothing new. It is basically getting citizens involved in creating an environment which enhances community safety and security.
- Community Programs in various state in India has seen the success .For eg –
- Maithri – Andhra Pradesh
- Friends of Police – Tamil Nadu
- Mohalla Committees – Maharastra
- Confidence building measures between communities and building of mutual trust is essential to curb communalism.
- District Peace Committees/Integration Councils should be made effective instruments of addressing issues likely to cause communal disharmony.
- The existing provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code need to be strengthened.
- Enhanced punishments for communal offences
- Setting up of special courts for expeditious trial of cases related to communal violence.
- Giving powers of remand to Executive Magistrates in cases of communal offences.
- Prescription of norms of relief and rehabilitation.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.